Since partnering with Globelet to launch #forcupssake – Stone & Wood’s cup exchange initiative, the brewery has saved over 20,000 cups from entering landfill or recycling centres in just 6 months!

“Introducing #forcupssake at various food and craft beer festivals and at our own Stone & Wood events we have demonstrated that there is a successful solution to eliminating single use packaging at events within our communities. The high return rate on cups at festivals and events means our drinkers are getting it and want to be a part of the solution to a circular economy” says Sarah Blomkamp from Stone & Wood Brewery.

In addition to eliminating single use cups at events, the brewery employees’ local not-for-profit Shift Project to wash their cups after each event at their Byron Bay based brewery so they can continue to use the cups at events and encourage a circular economy.

“We hope that we can influence more breweries / festivals around Australia to eliminate single use packaging and implement using re-usable cups”, says Sarah.

At TEDX SYDNEY, Globelet

- Stopped 14,000 single use coffee cups from landfill - Stopped 10,000 single use bottles of water from landfill

You can’t deny that single-use plastics are fast-becoming the enemy to our modern day society. From grand-scale companies down to the local coffee shop, it’s an environmental responsibility that can no longer be avoided.

Businesses are now being urged to step up their game and set the standard for eco-friendliness because if they don’t, consumers will simply turn away.

One such brand that has taken this responsibility further than the rest is TEDxSydney event partner, Globelet.

Founder Ryan Everton came up with the idea after realising the overwhelming amount of cups he had consumed during a rugby game. Four years later, Globelet is now involved in some of Australia and New Zealand’s largest festivals and major sports events where people have no problem participating in the initiative and developing new habits.

The concept works like this – you put a deposit on a cup for $3, fill it up and then either return it for a fresh one, get your deposit back or keep it.

Made from virgin and recycled plastic and distinctly unique cup designs, Globelet reuses over five million reusable cups. Not to mention, twenty million cups have now avoided landfill because of it.

In 2014, eco-conscious arts and music weekend Splore was the first New Zealand festival to use the Globelet. Recently named one of the world’s 36 greenest festivals, the move saw Splore reduce its 55,000 compostable one-use cups to 11,000 reusable Globelet’s as a result. Australian Festivals including Woodford Folk Festival, Sydney Festival, and sporting events including the NRL have also started partnering with Globelet.

It’s this kind of model that is rapidly inspiring other businesses to adopt the same behaviour. As Ryan was told by Steve Jobs right hand man, ‘anyone can sell things. But with the same amount of investment, energy and time you can build something hard and remarkable that changes the world, makes it better and makes an impact’.

From in-house recycling and washing systems, to the packaging of products and sustainability policies – there’s no limitation to eco-friendliness when you decide to be creative about it.

This year’s TEDxSydney will be the first zero-waste conference in Australia and will showcase the Globelet washing system and whole product life cycle in action. We hope to see you there, Globelet cup in hand

Yes, the Olympics has yet another cupping craze, though this one involves the swirling orange, blue and green color patterns on a yellow cup that include the name and silhouette for more than two dozen sports.

The most common sight at Olympic venues aren’t medals draped around necks, but fans walking around with arms full, fixated on finding the next beer stand and hoarding empty cups.

Sure, but fans are chugging — and sometimes just dumping — their half liters (about 17 ounces) of Skol lager simply for the empty cups. Then it’s back in line to put another 13 Brazilian reals (about $4) on the growing beer tab. That totals at least 300 reals for the set.

The cups are suddenly fueling the merchandise machine and have been traded, sold, and yes, even stolen, as fans clamor for hard-to-find sports such as gymnastics and soccer this deep into the Olympics.

About an hour before boxing’s Sunday evening session started, fans lined up 25 deep at some “cerveja” stands ready to go another round.

The long lines weren’t necessarily because of slow pours from the can into the cup. Once at the front of the line, fans would shake through stacks of cups until they found the one sport they wanted.

“Boxe! Boxe! Boxe!” one fan shouted in Portuguese in his search for boxing.

“No! No!” the server shouted, as he pointed to one of the other stands at Rio Centro.

So off the man went, without a beer, with a more pressing mission on tap for the night.

Trampoline, tennis, equestrian, taekwondo and water polo were the most common cups found Sunday at the complex that’s home to boxing, table tennis, badminton and weightlifting.

Brazilian native Sergio De Oliveira, now of Hoboken, New Jersey, wore his Team USA hat and shirt and gripped his equestrian (“hipismo”) cup.

De Oliveira and husband Terry Miles are trying to collect the cups of all 14 events they’ve seen at the Olympics.

De Oliveira had no idea that when he bought a gymnastics cup at the opening ceremony, the hunk of plastic would soon spark a memorabilia frenzy.

“It was huge we got it all,” Miles said.

Miles doesn’t drink, leaving all the beer guzzling to De Oliveira.

They have about 10 cups so far, but had yet to find their No. 1 target — archery. They also wanted synchronized diving.

But don’t expect the couple to auction the cups on eBay to recoup the 130 reals and counting they’ve spent on their collectibles. They are keeping most of them and will share a few with friends back in the United States.

Carmen Pruneda, of San Antonio, Texas, had no interest in sipping any light blonde lager.

“I’m looking for cups, but I don’t drink beer,” she said.

Pruneda has traded pins for cups, and cups for pins. She hit a bit of good luck when a woman dropped a cup on an escalator. The woman asked Pruneda if she was a collector. When she said yes, the stranger gave her both of her cups, boosting Pruneda’s total to six.

One beer server said it was forbidden to just buy a cup.

The trinkets are a steal compared to other Olympic merchandise. Olympic hats are going for about 60 reals, T-shirts for 80 to 100 and keychains are 35. One man bought a beach towel at the souvenir stand — a soft landing spot for the three cups he then stuffed inside his shopping bag.

Come to think of it, those purple circles dotting Michael Phelps’ shoulder and back from his cupping therapy do look like coasters.

Maybe he wouldn’t mind serving as a true arm rest for the cups at the next Olympic bash.

While stuffed trash bags and overflowing bins of Skol aluminum beer cans are a sore sight at the games, there’s not a plastic cup around to recycle.

Many said you could never hold a large, multi-day music festival without using disposable water bottles. The festival would lose to much money. Womad Festival and Globelet proved the naysayers wrong. The decision to go disposable cup free was a major success. Over 3000 bottles stopped a normal 15,000 single use bottles from going to landfill Communication was necessary to ensure that festival goers, musicians and staff still had easy access to water and drinking containers. Womad, with the help of Globelet, continues to create the model of a truly sustainable, disposable-free festival. We are proud to work alongside them, now in our 3rd year as a partner

Compostable Cups

What happens when you buy a coffee in a compostable cup?

If it gets thrown in a recycling or rubbish bin (how many compostable bins have you seen), it goes to landfill, it is now worse for the environment than a recyclable plastic cup.

Recyclable Cups

If it gets thrown in a recycling bin dirty (how many people wash their cup before disposing it) or if it goes rubbish bin, it goes to landfill, it is now worse for the environment than a unrecyclable plastic cup.

Reusable Cups

How many people remember to bring their reusable cup? How many people forget to wash their reusable cup? If you forget it, or if it is dirty, you will likely end up getting a compostable or disposable cup and adding to the problem.

The Solution?

There is a big opportunity. The opportunity is to design a reusable product that becomes part of the system. It becomes a forever cup. It has collection points, it has ease of use, it becomes part of everybody's habits, and it doesn't cost the consumer money, it doesn't trick the coffee companies into compostable, and it saves the world from disposable cups.

Ambev's paid a high price for sponsorship at the Rio Olympics, but it was worth it.

The Brazilian beer company introduced it's Skol brand to the world of reusable souvenir cups, each one emblazoned with a different Olympic sport.

The strategy led spectators to guzzle hundreds of extra litres of beer in the hope to accquire the whole collection of 42 different cups.

Not only did Ambev sell vast amounts of beer, it has gotten the Skol name into kitchen cupboards across the world. (Globelet Director, Linda Jenkinson brought back 20)

The popularity of the Globelet concept makes sense at an event where T-shirts from the Rio 2016 megastore cost 95 reais ($30NZD), making a $13-real beer-and-cup offering a bargain.

The faceoff between Brazilian and Swedish women soccer teams the semi finals - based at the Maracana soccer stadium - demonstrated how much of a hit the cups were. Skol's beer stations were bustling with activity.

"Of course I'm buying more beer because of the cups," said Claudia Maria Dias de Sousa, 58, a physical education teacher from Belem, Brazil. "They're souvenirs for my friends from the Rio Olympics."

The collection of cups from every sport at the games.

Dias de Sousa said she has collected eight of the hard plastic cups so far. She was overheard requesting a basketball cup because soccer had sold out. At a basketball game Saturday night, a spectator tossed one of the yellow and green cups into a trash bin at half time. Within a minute someone had retrieved it, adding it to a stack of more than 10 he was carrying around.

"People will go for the perception of getting something that's special and spend the extra money," said Joe Favorito, a sports marketing expert who teaches at Columbia University in New York. "It's a great branding opportunity for Skol."

Ambev, which is controlled by Anheuser-Busch InBev NV, needed to deliver strong results at this year's Olympics. With Brazil mired in recession, the company sold less beer by volume in the second quarter than it has in the last seven years, while also losing market share to less expensive rivals. Chief Executive Officer Bernardo Pinto Paiva told investors on that 2017 could be better as consumer confidence recovers and inflation slows.

The idea was to pay homage to the different Olympic sports, instead the cups turned into a hot collector's item, Bruna Buas, Ambev's Olympics manager, said through a press officer.

In response to the cup craze and to promote responsible drinking, Ambev said it has set aside space at venues where fans can exchange cups as if they were Pokemon cards.

Skol's strategy isn't totally unique. Budweiser, which Ambev sells as a premium brand in Brazil, had a collectible cup at the FIFA World Cup in Brazil in 2014. Coca-Cola did something similar. But the gimmick of building a collection of Skol cups sets it apart. It also means beer salespeople must often negotiate the details of the cup before serving a beer.

Let's hope the All Blacks, NZ Cricket and stadiums want to get in support of a similar concept in New Zealand and Australia. Globelet is here to make it happen.